Socialism was the most looked-up word in 2015. Largely attributable to the popularity of US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party, it reflects a year of political alternatives becoming reality.

George Orwell’s polemical book The Road to Wigan Pier is the thematic framework for the next two editions of AV Festival. Eighty-years ago in 1936, Orwell was commissioned by the Left Book Club to write on the depressed areas of the North of England and spent two months living in the industrial North. The book is his account of working-class life amidst growing social injustice, poverty, unemployment and class division. The experience clarified his ideas about socialism, concluding that the basis for a democratic socialism is equality and fairness.

Mirroring the structure of the book the 2016 edition of the Festival is Part One followed by Part Two in 2018, representing a new way of curating a biennial Festival. AV Festival 2016 initiates this approach, presenting work by artists and filmmakers who situate themselves in relation to historic and contemporary political struggle, revolution and social movements, creating new forms of resistance to neoliberal capitalism.